The implement of husbandry, the hoe or spade, slips unheeded from his grasp ; his form straightens and then bends slightly forward ; the good right hand, with open palm slightly inward curved, is raised behind the ear; the right foot is forward flung; the left arm falls behind ; the lines of the noble face grow tense ; and the fire of battle begins to- blaze in his eyes, as with eager glance he scans the northern horizon. The sound, which the loyal wind, loving the fair manor well, now brings in increasing volume, needs no interpretation to-his ears. He has heard it often and knows it well. It is the musketry fire of his good comrades to the north, and tells to him the tale that the British marauder is up the valley once more to plunder, burn and slay. It cries to his very soul, " To arms, they come, the foe, "the foe !" I trust that my eyes may yet see, crowning some one of those lofty heights, which look up that lovely valley, that identical militia-man, in that very attitude, reproduced in heroic bronze. The posture, however, is only for an instant, hie needs no second call to duty. He leaps from the field to the farmhouse, seizes the trusty musket, already charged, from the hooks over the mantle shelf, and the precious powder and ball from the closet near by ; and snatching a kiss from lips of loved wife and babes, whom he may never see again, he goes bounding away northward over hill and dale, to the chosen, natural place of rendezvous, -- a little cliff, which juts orrt from the ridge and about whose very base winds the valley road, down which the retiring foe must come. In the bushes along the verge, with his gathering comrades, he hides and waits. vSee, how closely they crouch to the very soil, in whose defence they are" about to risk their lives.